The Fire and the Veil (Veronica Barry Book 2) (24 page)

“Whatever. Anyway, Owen was really rough with Lola and she said she was going to leave, and then she changed her mind when she thought about leaving her sister there. But then Owen refused to let her stay and practically threw her down the stairs.”

“Ouch,” Daniel said.

“So she left, and then she still came to school, and I tried to talk to her—”

“Was this in a dream too?”

“No, no. The dream ended when she left the house. The next day, in class, she showed up. I tried to talk to her about it, but she totally freaked out—”

“Did you tell her you overhead something about it?”

“No, I tried to tell her the truth.”

“Ooh.”

“Yeah, it didn’t work out. Anyway, she ran off.” Veronica described the dream of Lola at the motel. “That’s actually how I found Amani Ahmad. She was there. She tried to help Lola.”

“That’s weird.”

“Yeah, I have a theory about it. I think the spirits that hang out around me—”

“Wait, what?”

“You know, there are some that are usually around.”

“You never told me that. Do you see them all the time?”

“No,” Veronica said. She felt tired. She hadn’t even told him about the visions she’d just gotten at the Carver house and with all of these tangents it seemed like she’d never get back to that. But Daniel always had to know all the details about everything. It was the detective in him. “No, I don’t. But sometimes they say stuff. Just like, randomly. I hear them best when I’m just sitting somewhere, relaxed. But I don’t think I see them unless they want me to see them, or then it’s just like a shadow. They have to focus their energies for me to really see them.”

“Like the Carvers did at the house.”

“Yeah, although it doesn’t have to be awful like that. I’ve seen that guy from the Seven Eleven ATM again, for instance. I think maybe he likes materializing for me.”

“The one you talked to when we were looking for Angie?”

“Yeah.”

Daniel nodded. “Okay, so what was your theory?”

“There are spirits that hang around me, like the ATM guy, and my mother, I think, and I’m pretty sure there are several others. I don’t know why they hang around. I take it they choose to—the ATM guy said something like that, about how he decided to follow me. And my theory is that they can also influence things sometimes. So they influenced this john of Lola’s to choose the same motel that Amani was staying in because that way I’d find her.”

“Huh,” Daniel said. “Weird.”

“You think that’s weird?” Veronica said, pulling her hand from his, leaning back into the couch and rubbing her eyes. After a moment she realized the images of the Carvers had not appeared again. She opened her eyes again to be safe. “I also think that sometimes the spirits disagree with each other about what to tell me.”

“They do?”

Veronica shrugged. “Seems like it. I don’t think most of them wanted me to pursue the whole Amani thing at all, but then sometimes I’d still get information. ATM guy is the one who gave me the name of the motel, actually. He as good as told me he was going against what the others wanted.”

Daniel inhaled, then blew the air out noisily. “This is out of my league.”

“Yeah,” Veronica said. It was nice to lean back into the couch and rest her head. She felt so tired.

“Okay, so tell me what you saw today at the house,” Daniel said.

“Right. Paul was arguing with Owen. He was really angry. I guess he came home and realized Lola was gone. Owen said some things about how she was gone for good. Paul didn’t like that. At all. He was furious about it.”

“Do you know anything about Paul? Have you seen him before?”

“No,” Veronica said. “Well, actually, yes. I had this really short vision, of a boy chasing Lola. It was Paul.”

“Chasing how?”

“That’s the thing, I think Lola is really frightened of him.”

“And from what you’ve told me about Lola, that takes some doing.”

“Yes, it does,” Veronica said. “So ever since I saw that, I’ve been thinking there was something bad about him. It seems strange that he was so mad about her going. I don’t completely understand, but in any case, he was super upset. And after the parents went to bed, he poured gasoline on a pile of clothes in the laundry room and down the hall, and threw some of it on the door.”

“Did you see how he lit it?”

“Yeah. He had a box of matches. He wanted to have time to get out of the house, so he lit a cigarette, stuck it in the matchbox, and put the matchbox on the sleeve of one of the shirts that he’d soaked in gasoline—”

“I knew it!” Daniel said. “Or actually, Jerry knew it. I can’t believe this.”

“What?”

Daniel groaned. “It’s complicated.” He stood up and put his hands on his hips, looking around his living room. “To simplify: there is a power struggle going on between some detectives and some of the arson guys. Jerry Cohen has been an arson investigator for almost forty years. Can you imagine? But these young guys want him to retire and they’re in such a rush…” Daniel rolled his eyes. “Jerry said the guy used a delay device. He said it! He was pretty sure it was exactly the kind of thing you described. But those yahoos were in such a rush, so convinced it had to be Lola because of the clothes—”

“You lost me.”

Daniel sighed. “Sorry. See, the young guys—there are two of them—they’ve been arson investigators for maybe five years between them. They figured out that the arsonist doused some clothes with gasoline. The detectives assigned to the case had already seen Lola’s rap sheet. Between the four of them they figured it had to be her. Females are more often the ones that burn things that belong to the people they want to hurt.”

“And the—what did you call it? Delay thing?”

“Delay device. Jerry figured that out, I’m not sure how. Looking at tiny little bits of things. The guy’s a genius. And girls don’t use devices as much. Guys do, and guys like to use gasoline, too, according to Jerry. Jerry said he didn’t think it was Lola.”

“I thought it might be her,” Veronica said. She gazed at her hands. “I saw her burning matches in a dream a while back, and when you told me what had happened… I thought maybe I could have prevented it.”

Daniel sat back down next to her and took her hand again, squeezing it. “I don’t think so.”

She breathed in. “Maybe not. But then again, who knows what I might have seen if I hadn’t been so distracted by the Amani disappearance.”

“Don’t beat yourself up. Khalilah asked you for help. You were just trying to do the right thing.”

“I have learned from this, though. I have to just go by what the spirits give me. I can’t go seeking stuff out.”

“Maybe not,” Daniel said. “Or maybe sometimes if you seek something out, they’ll be happy to give you information. You gave me the name of the man who murdered the guy at the ATM, remember?”

Veronica blinked. “I did,” she said. “That’s right.”

“And we weren’t looking for that information at the time. You were following what the spirits were showing you about Angie.”

Veronica nodded slowly. “True.”

After a moment, Daniel squeezed her hand again. “Did you see anything else today?”

“Not a whole lot that’s useful. I got to experience breathing in the smoke and hearing Owen choking and not being able to move.”

“How nice for you,” Daniel said.

“Yeah. And then when I came out of it is when the ghosts came at me.”

“Like you said. Angry.”

“Yes,” Veronica said. “Very.”

Daniel brought her hand to his lips and kissed the backs of her fingers. “I’m sorry, Ronnie. I wish you never had to go through any of that.”

Veronica smiled a little. “It’s over now.”

Daniel met her eyes with a searching look. “I can’t decide if it was wrong to take you there. You wouldn’t have had to deal with those ghosts. But you gave me what I needed—confirmation that Jerry was right.”

“For all the good it does. It’s not like anyone else is going to care what I have to say.”

“But now I can back him up—I can be confident he’s right.”

“You wouldn’t have, before?”

Daniel kissed her fingers again. “I still would have, but I’d have wondered… and that would make me less assertive.”

Veronica gazed at her fingers in his hand, raised up near his mouth. The kisses were so nice, and she was starting to feel less upset. The dread of the enraged ghosts was starting to fade. She felt safe here with Daniel. And it seemed that all her concern over him being fed up with her was groundless after all.

“Do you ever get sick of all of my drama?” she asked before she could stop herself. It was one of those questions he couldn’t answer truthfully if the truth was yes. Why even ask it? For empty reassurance? “Never mind.”

Daniel frowned and gripped her fingers tightly. “Ronnie, I’ve told you, I like your drama.”

Veronica smiled and looked down at the floor. “It’s not like you could say anything right now if you
were
sick of it.”

“But I’m
not.
Please listen. Ronnie, I think you’re amazing. When are you going to realize that?”

“I was pretty bitchy to you the last time—when you drove me home…”

“And I was being overprotective. I’ve fought with myself over it,” Daniel said. He caught her eyes. “After I dropped you off it took me a while to even understand why you were pissed, and then I thought about it. How Detective Pushkin would feel if I told her to stay out of a case because it was too dangerous… I mean, don’t get me wrong, I still think you would have gotten hurt if you’d tried to go after that Ahmad character on your own. But I have to trust you to make smart choices for yourself, not wait for me to tell you to back off from something.”

Veronica pulled her hand away and wrapped her arms around her middle. “The only reason I decided not to go after him is because Khalilah and I found Amani and she’s fine. If he had been keeping her prisoner, or if someone else had, I would have tried to help her.”

“You just said you learned your lesson about that.”

“Only that if the spirits don’t seem to want me to pursue something I should just let it go.”

“So it’s fine for them to tell you something’s too dangerous, but not for me to?”

“They have a different perspective than you,” Veronica said. “They have the bigger picture.”

“And I have over a decade of experience as a cop,” Daniel said.

“Look, it doesn’t matter now anyway.”

“Until the next time you dream something that points the way into some dangerous situation.”

“Yeah,” Veronica conceded. “Yeah. That has occurred to me, actually.”

Daniel frowned.

Veronica turned to him, grabbing one of his hands. “But maybe they wouldn’t lead me somewhere dangerous, Daniel. Maybe if I just pay attention, I won’t get hurt.”

“You got hurt going after Angie and Grant Slecterson.”

He had a point. She’d been following the spirits’ clues when she fell down the ravine and broke her arm. She could have been killed. And really, how much could she trust a bunch of dead people to avoid getting her killed? They were dead themselves. It was possible they didn’t see it as such a terrible outcome.

“What am I supposed to do?” she asked. “Just ignore them if they tell me someone’s in danger? Tell the cops, who’ll just ignore
me
?”

“I won’t ignore you!”

“But there’s only so much you can do, Daniel! You told me so yourself. You couldn’t go looking for Amani without a statement from her father. I have a feeling that if all the necessary elements are there for you to investigate, I’m not going to be getting any messages about it anyway. Why would I need to?”

“You’re not making any sense.”

“The spirits contact me when there’s no other way.”

“How can you be sure about that?”

“I can’t, but it makes sense, doesn’t it? The police arrested the wrong guy instead of Grant when Sylvia was killed. Grant would have murdered Angie if I hadn’t been around to get those messages. And I might have prevented this fire, if I’d just paid more attention!”

“Now you’re really not making sense! You said you’ve been dreaming about Lola, not Paul Carver. How would you have been able to stop the fire?”

Veronica sighed. “I’m not sure. Maybe if I’d intervened somehow, it wouldn’t have come to it. Lola would be safe somewhere, maybe in foster care. Maybe Paul Carver would be in jail for whatever he did to her. He wouldn’t have had the opportunity to burn the house down.”

“Too many maybes, Ronnie,” Daniel said, his voice more gentle now. “You can’t keep blaming yourself for what happened.”

“But there has to be a reason why they sent me those dreams, Daniel.”

“I’m sure there is. Maybe—” He stopped and gave her a quick grin. “
Maybe
we just don’t know what the reason is yet.”

The clownfish darted around in their aquariums. Veronica watched them, thinking about what Daniel had said. She supposed the situation with Lola wasn’t yet resolved. “You said they arrested her?”

“Yeah. She’s in Thornton, awaiting trial.”

“Thornton?”

“The Warren E. Thornton Youth Center. Juvenile Hall,” Daniel said.

“Have you found Leinani?”

“Not yet.”

“What’ll happen to Lola if they convict her?”

“How old is she?”

“Sixteen.”

“Well, it’s likely she’ll go to criminal court, then, as opposed to juvenile. The cut off is 14 in most cases—always if it’s a murder.”

“
If
it’s a murder?”

“There’s a chance the DA might decide to call this manslaughter. I’m not sure how much of a difference that’d make. It’s actually in his interest to put this through adult court, for budget reasons. I’m guessing she’ll go to criminal, not juvenile.”

“And what does that mean?”

“Juvenile court tends to focus on rehabilitation. Criminal focuses on punishment. It’s too early to say what the charges will be or how the DA’ll go about this, Ronnie. But worst case scenario? They could call it first degree murder—two counts. And that’s not even considering the arson, the destruction of property, endangering the rest of the people in the neighborhood… Not good for Lola.”

“She didn’t do it,” Veronica whispered.

“I know that, and you know that. And Jerry Cohen knows it, too. But he’s the only one who’s said anything, and it may not be enough to discourage the DA from taking the murder case.”